A philosopher of mind at the University of Arizona. At the time of this writing he is also Associate Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies. According to his webpage1, he came to philosophy by way of Mathematics and Computer Science.
Chalmers is most famous for introducing the zombie debate. In The Conscious Mind (1996) he argues for dualism:
- By Identity Theory, if two things are identical they are identical in all possible worlds. In other words, if two things are identical, it is inconceivable that this identity could not be the case.
- You can conceive of a zombie: a being functionally isomorphic and physically identical to yourself that has no phenomenology.
- Therefore, phenomenology is not identical to any physical thing.
- Phenomenology exists.
- Therefore, there exists a thing that is not physical.
In particular, Chalmers is a property dualist and believes in weak AI. He has become so associated with zombies that he has links to all sorts (Hollywood, Haitian, Unix, etc.) on his webpage and has been called "Zombie David".
1: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/
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